David Ogilvy's soft sell

David Ogilvy was fond of lists. He used them often in his many dispatches to the 9,000 employees of his eponymous agency at the height of its 20th Century power. And also in response to the frequent queries he received from reporters, graduates, nephews, and people who used far too many paperclips. Written with a calm certainty in his trademark staccato style, Ogilvy’s numbered lists must have appeared to underlings as if carved in stone on some biblical mountainside. If God had a copywriter, it would surely be David Ogilvy. (As it happens, he was once described as ‘The Pope of Advertising’ — something he found amusing, in the way that true things often are.)